I had a client request that they wanted a mailing list popup like the example given below where the popup is presented to the user as soon as they land on the site

I am a little concerned about the effectiveness of this popup in terms of conversion and the potential for it being an annoyance. I did some research on what the general view is on mailing list popups and there seems to be consensus that they can help in increasing conversions but they can be really annoying as well. However most of this information was garnered by discussions in forums about such methods to sign up people. I am wondering if there is any research on whether such a popup is bad usability or there are pros which outweigh the cons?

5 Answers
5

Simply ask your client if they are willing to lose users at this step in hopes of collecting more email addresses. A complete and thorough visit of the site may be worth less to them than having that email address or vice versa.

I also like to tack calls-to-action like this at the end of good content (a gallery, a video) that I feel engaged users are likely to consume.

I'm a humble man. Max wins simply for his concise questioning of goals i beat around several bushs for : Simply ask your client if they are willing to lose users at this step in hopes of collecting more email addresses.
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Brandt SolovijJan 4 '13 at 6:32

Why use scare tactics? Just gather data, even if it's a small test slice of the traffic.
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plainclothesJan 4 '13 at 17:52

Are there any studies that show whether the users you lose outweigh the e-mails you gain? In other words, will this kind of popup lose me 10 for every one e-mail I gain, or only 2?
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Patrick SzalapskiNov 19 '13 at 21:51

I would say do the due diligence and determine some "place" aka interaction of the site that suggests the user is "invested" in whatever the site is selling - then present them with the option to enlist in the spam roll.

@ your initial question : yes, landing on a homepage and being presented with this dialog is counter productive to your efforts. However, it is a very useful dialog, so as mentioned before - define the criteria that triggers this "pop up" and let the user stumble upon it as an easter egg.

I can't share any numbers publicly but I have first hand experience with two campaigns where this tactic yielded big results in an ecomm setting. Big results.

I hate the idea of it too. It makes me feel like a sleazy marketer. Unfortunately, the customers respond. I guess they like it in the end.

I make it a point to never respond to such pop ups and often leave the site. I'm not sure if this is because I know marketing too well. I'm beginning to wonder if it's a generational issue... will another generation turn against it?

In any case, you need to test it for every audience. Just because it worked for the last client doesn't mean it won't backfire with the next client's customers.

I should clarify that I ran this test three times with two clients and it won hands down every time when tracking the full customer value. The dialog was presented on first time entry to the site, regardless of the entry point.
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plainclothesJan 4 '13 at 5:36

quantify "two clients" - and by that i mean : "unique open rate recipients that arent business partners" i ask bc im curious :D no snarky
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Brandt SolovijJan 4 '13 at 5:39

Huh? Isn't two a quantity? Two separate organizations with two separate demographics.
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plainclothesJan 4 '13 at 5:41

Certainly a bad idea. Why would a user sign up without even having seen and judged the content of the website?

At the time they get presented with the popup their only experience with the site is the name, loading speed and an popup they did not open themselves.

If you want to comprehensively test and can afford to do so, set up google analytics, track newsletter subscriptions as a conversion goal. See how conversion, bounce rate and pages per visit behave with the popup in place for a day or week - my guess is you can effectively argue against keeping the popup with that data.

According the the original question, the visitor will not have read any articles or spent any time on the page at all: "the popup is presented to the user as soon as they land on the site."
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Michael HuangJan 8 '13 at 2:50